Strc prst skrz krk

'Strč prst skrz krk' is a famous Czech 'tongue-twister' (I doubt this is hard for a native speaker to say, as it's hardly even difficult for an English speaker). It means 'Stick a finger down your throat,' and it's interesting becuase of its complete lack of vowels. Instead, it relies on syllabic liquids, /l/ and /r/ for the syllabic nucleus of these words. Many words in Czech are like this: vlk 'wolf', blb 'fool' (and the corresponding verb 'to be a fool, to gradually become stupid': blbnout, and a form of its past, zblbl, 'he has become dumb' -- thanks to solaraddict), and my favorite Czech word zmrzlina 'ice cream.' It also shows up in city names, such as Brno and Plzeň, which the Austrians couldn't pronounce when they controlled Bohemia and Moravia, so they named these places Brünn and Pilsen (which is where Pilsner beer comes from -- 90% of beers outside of Britain are lagers, and the vast vast majority of these are golden pilsners, including our mediocre yet beloved American brands Budweiser and Miller).

If you think this no vowel thing is weird -- some languages have contrastive length on syllabic resonants like these. And we don't have to look too far: short and long syllabic l's and r's exist in Slovak, Czech's sister language. Most Slavic languages can have syllabic liquids, including Czech, Slovak, Serbian / Croatian, and others.

Waldermar Exkul has pointed out something interesting. Berber languages are notorious for minimalist usage of vowels, and he points out something interesting from Tamazight Berber: tftkt means 'you have suffered a strain.' In this complete sentence, the only syllabic nucleus is the /f/, which is an obstruent and not even voiced. Some American Indian languages such as Chinhook also have awesomely obscene looking consonant clusters.

Thanks to all who have helped me with the mistakes on this one, special thanks to Exkul for this cool sidenote.

Also, a note on pronunciation: some people have asked me to provide a phonetic mark-up, but this would do almost no good since it would be [ strč prst skrs krk ], in which the only real difference is the voicenessless assimilation in skrz. The 'r' in question is more or less a voiced alveolar trill (like the 'rr' in Spanish), and not the 'r' of English, though it's possible to use the English r (a voiced retroflex alveolar approximant in North American English) in this context, but then you'd be speaking with an accent.